North Carolina!!!!!!

Okay, so, fate had something in mind for us when we came to North Carolina I guess. We were thinking that we were heading towards Georgia, having spoken to a farmer there who said we could come for a week or two, sounded good when he gets back to us saying, actually he's got people, he can't use more. But we really wanted to do some farming around here so we went back to the WWOOF book, called a bunch of people who never got back to us and then saw the description of this farm that caught our eye. We wrote the farmer who wrote back saying, no, not right now, but we called her too and she called us the night before leaving New York to say actually, sure, come on by.
And thank god she did. We're been with Pat for the past week, up at her place 4000 ft high in the mountains, working her garden and reveling in the beauty. She homesteads up there, growing about 70 fruit trees, blueberries, grapes, raspberries and veggies, no electricity, takes water from her spring. It;s been amazing. Her place is carved out of the crease of a mountain side (I finally know what a holler is!), we walk half a mile up to get there and she's this amazing woman, been homesteading for years and years. She introduced us to local farmers and friends, took us out to see mountain music and made us totally welcome. It was as close to paradise as we've been in years. Now we're thinking, farming??? why not homesteading??
No but really, it was a big reminder of all the things that are important to us that we often put aside towards the idea of growing more food for more people. A reconnection to how much we want to live outside of a system that just wants us to consume as much as possible, think as little as possible and forget about what we're destroying along the way.
Anyway, I can't describe how great the past week as been this way, but that's where we've been. We're driving down the coast to Georgia, then heading across to the west. But I think we;ll be back before this trip is out, I wanna pick apples in that holler.